<font color='#008080'><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">However, if the listener is outside the sound beam and the ultrasound column strikes a hard surface, the audible sound reflects back into the environment. The listener perceives the sound as originating from the reflective surface, not the hypersonic sound unit, and the reflective surface acts as a virtual-sound source. In addition, hypersonic sound does not follow the traditional loudspeaker-inverse-square law, which dictates that you have a 6-dB decrease in level for every doubling of the distance from the source. This fact means that hypersonic sound can travel much greater distances while maintaining intelligibility than the sound from conventional speakers.</td></tr></table>
So I would suspect that a home theatre application of this technology would involve finding the right reflective "speaker" material to paste onto the walls? Otherwise, you are reflecting off of drywall, which I would assume produces a slight muddying effect... too rigid a surface, and the sound could become brittle...
Fascinating possibilities. I only hope that fidelity can be achieved, otherwise this solution will probably be limited to conference and convention applications - which is still cool.
[edit: typos]</font>
